On the Square Today

Betsy VanDenBerghe on Evangelicals and Mormons making peace :

We refer to it in our family as “the clown episode.” Over a dozen years ago our family visited a collection of rare Bibles open to the public as part of a Sunday service sponsored by Salt Lake City’s Evangelical churches, and my kids quit complaining when they saw balloons in the children’s class. Unfortunately, things went south when the hired clown berated my little boy for mentioning the Book of Mormon in a scripture discussion.

Also today, Franklin Freeman reviews Haruki Murakami’s novel, 1Q84 :

What Haruki Murakami has given us in his latest novel, 1Q84 , is a loose baggy metaphysical monster of a fairy tale. The Japanese writer has said he wants to blend Dostoevsky and Raymond Chandler in his work, and he has done so in this novel with a triple portion: religious mysticism, murders and detective work, and the Little People.